The P1 is a battery-powered, belt-worn headphone amp with two XLR line inputs (for a stereo mix), designed for doing just this sort of thing. I’ve already got a small headphone amp (a Behringer Micromon MA400) which could have worked fine for this application, but that would have required me to find a place for it somewhere around the drum kit, and the MA400 also requires an AC adapter to be plugged in to power it.Īs an alternative, I considered purchasing a Behringer Powerplay P1.

This is how I’ve typically set up my (floor wedge) monitor mixes in the past, only this time instead of connecting the Bus output to a power amp, I would be connecting it to a headphone amp.

The second option was to use one of the six Bus sends on the XR18 as a monitor feed. However, I wasn’t looking to spend an extra $250 for a P16M if I could avoid it. We use several P16M’s at church with our X32, and they work great. Like its big brother the Behringer X32, the XR18 comes equipped with an “Ultranet” port–a special jack that uses a standard Ethernet cable to carry 16 channels of digital audio from the XR18 to the Behringer P16 system. The first option for an in-ear mix with the XR18 was to purchase a P16M personal monitor mixer. The other guys in the band will continue to use floor wedges, but after getting accustomed to using in-ear monitors at church for several months now (and abusing my own ears mercilessly for over 25 years playing drums), I decided to do the same thing with my own PA system. When I recently decided to go to a wired in-ear monitor system for myself (I’m the drummer in the band), I discovered there are no fewer than 3 options for doing so with the XR18. One of the things I like about the XR18 is its flexibility. After using it for about a year now, I could never imagine going back to an analog mixer and a huge rack full of heavy analog gear for my live sound system. As I’ve written about previously, I’m the proud owner of a Behringer X-Air XR18 digital Wi-fi mixer.

Behringer powerplay pm1 review